Great movies about family relationships

I’ve been so busy lately, but I made time to see two great movies about family relationships recently. I highly recommend them both as worthy of your time and money.

Nebraska was my favorite of the two movies. I thought this was a fantastic portrayal of how adult children must face the difficulties of aging parents. It runs you through the full spectrum of emotions in two hours – it’s a comedy, a drama, a horror story – all wrapped up into one. And then there’s a sucker punch at the end that really got me all teared up-well done! The best thing about it was how real it seemed. Families do have these kinds of problems, families do talk to each other this way, families do drive each other crazy, aging parents lose their minds and a filter on what they say. But in the end love is what keeps them together. I’ve got my fingers crossed for both Bruce Dern and June Squibb to win Oscars for their performances, which were outstanding, believable, and oh so painfully real.

I also saw August: Osage County and felt right at home with this dysfunctional family. Man oh man, Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts are so awful and wonderful in this at the same time. These relationships simmer with resentment and rage, just like in real families. The claws come out, the gloves go on, and this family really dukes it out after the father dies.

I’ve been given food for thought with both of these movies and keep rolling them over in my mind. In the end, I think it’s comforting to know that we all face issues and hardships with our family, but these complex relationships are the most important ones of all.